News September 14, 2022: Majority, Relate, PaperShell, Stilride, Spotify and more

Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for subscribers of Swedish Tech News.

Funding news

• Majority (Stockholm & Houston, all-in-one mobile banking for migrants in the US): 30$M in equity and $7.5M in debt funding, in a Series B round led by previous investor Valar Ventures, with participation from previous investor Heartcore Capital and a "leading U.S.-based based commercial bank” which provides the debt funding. According to DI Digital, the round was raised at a valuation of SEK2B (€190M, $190M) (English, Swedish / DI Digital paywall).
• Relate (Stockholm, apps for dating and couples): SEK7.2M (€680K, $670K) from previous investors Karl Johan Persson and Stefan Krook (Swedish, machine translation).
• In a follow-on investment, Creandum and Pale Blue Dot participated in a €30M ($30M) Series A+ round raised by Danish all-in-one EV charging management platform Monta (English).
• In a follow-on investment, Spintop Ventures participated in a €3.5M seed round raised by Norwegian podcast recording service Nomono (English).

>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups. Request access.

News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• The Swedish startups PaperShell and STILRIDE are 2 among 12 new partners that will work with Polestar on the EV maker's planned climate-neutral car (English).
• Jenny Holmström, CEO and co-founder of Stockholm-based couples app Coupleness, has some thoughts on how founders can avoid a divorce or a breakup while building their startup (English).
• On October 13, the 6-episode series The Playlist, depicting the early days of Spotify and inspired by the book "Spotify Untold" ("Spotify Inifrån") by DI journalists Sven Carlsson and Jonas Leijonhufvud, will come to Netflix globally (English).
• Spotify is now the top podcast network in the US based on reach, according to Edison Research (English).
• Creandum has promoted Beata Klein, who started as Associate, to Principal (English).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• Union Square Ventures takes the top spot in the new US-centric “Founder’s Choice” ranking, for which 388 verified founders were asked to vote anonymously on which investors they’d be most inclined to take money from again (English).
• How to think about revenue quality as an early stage founder (English).

Other interesting things related to Sweden

• Sweden's inflation rose to 9% in August, a new three-decade high (English, Swedish).
• In Sweden, IKEA is raising the price of its meat hotdog to 7kr and reducing the price of its plant-based hotdog to 5kr. The company says this is not an inflation-driven decision, but an environmental one (Swedish, machine translation).

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That's it for today.